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Full-body spinners
A full-body spinner, or just body spinner, is a spinning weapon which encompasses the robot's body in any shape or form. There have been several kinds of full-body spinner in Robot Wars, ranging in levels of destruction and success. The first robot to use this weapon was Caliban in Series 2, although it was interchangeable with a set of flails and was never seen in action, whereas the first robot to use the weapon in combat was Warhog in Series 4. By far the most successful full-body spinners are the robots of Team Typhoon - including multiple Middleweight champions Typhoon and Series 7 champion Typhoon 2 - and ''Extreme Warriors'' Season 1 runner-up The Revolutionist. Definition *A Full-body spinner consists of a spinning weapon which surrounds part of or all of a robot's chassis and internals. These weapons often rotate on a central shaft, or on a mechanism between the weapon and chassis, and are lined with blades, flails, teeth or other sharp/weighted weapons in order to cause damage to other robots. A full-body spinner, as its name implies, covers the entire body of a robot using a spinning weapon. There exist two primary variations of the full body spinner concept: *'Rim spinner' - alternatively known as a ring spinner, an individual, round blade surrounds the exterior of the robot, and spins independently of the robot's main body. Examples include M.R. Speed Squared and Gyrobot. *'Shell spinner' - whereby the spinner is the robot's own armour, and the whole exterior of the robot is used as a spinning weapon. Examples include Typhoon 2 and the original Corkscrew. Advantages and Disadvantages Advantages *This weapon protects the robot on all sides, making it virtually unapproachable when it is spun up to full speed. *The size and weight of the weapon gives it the potential to cause very high levels of damage. This is best demonstrated by the machines of Team Typhoon, especially Typhoon 2, which was able to cause substantial amounts of damage to other competitors and the arena wall during its Series 7 run. *The gyroscopic forces acting on the robot when the weapon spins up makes it very difficult for the robot to be flipped over by an opponent. This was crucial in allowing Typhoon 2 to remain upright in its Series 7 Grand Final as Storm 2 got underneath it with its front wedge. *Rim spinners can also be compatible with invertible designs, as proven by Gyrobot and M.R. Speed Squared. *By working independently of a robot's locomotion to offer free movement, the full body spinner succeeds the sit-and-spin design. *Shell spinners circumvent the issue of most spinners where their weapon's weight prevents them from having heavy armour, as the spinner itself doubles as the robot's body. The shell can therefore be made very thick and strong to offer optimal protection, in turn strengthening the weapon and increasing its potential damage output. Disadvantages *Being mostly circular-shaped, robots with full-body spinners usually suffer from poor pushing power as a result of their shape. Only The Revolutionist, Delldog, Corkscrew and Typhoon proved successful in ramming and pushing other opponents to victory. M.R. Speed Squared and Corkscrew Two both had to fight without the use of their weapons on occasions; the former only managed to win one battle with its rim spinner not functioning at all. *Depending on the weapon's destructive potential, they often raised safety concerns with the Robot Wars production crew. Warhog and Typhoon 2 both shattered the arena wall at various points during the original series, while Mauler was disqualified from the First World Championship altogether when the producers deemed that its weapon was too powerful for the arena to contain safely. *They take time to spin up as with all other spinning weapons, which leaves robots with them particularly vulnerable to flippers if they are unable to avoid them or get their weapons up to speed in time. This was crucial in Ripper's three-second defeat of Daisy-Cutter, which was able to get underneath Daisy-Cutter and defeat it before it was able to spin its weapon up. *It is often difficult to incorporate an effective and reliable self-righting mechanism into a full-body spinner; there were no instances in Robot Wars of a shell spinner featuring one. Of the rim spinners, which are generally invertible anyway, only Revenge of Trouble & Strife was able to feature a self-righting mechanism through its pneumatic flipping arm, although this often failed to work throughout its appearances. *As with horizontal flywheels and heavy rotating blades, the build-up of kinetic energy in a full-body spinner could cause it to recoil. Besides causing internal damage, the recoil from a full-body spinner could also cause the robot to rebound in a different direction, potentially into arena hazards. Most notably, Corkscrew was eliminated from its Series 6 melee after rebounding into the the pit following an attack on Kronic 2, while Typhoon Lightning (as one part of Typhoon Twins), also recoiled into the pit against 259 in the Extreme 2 Middleweight Championship. *Throughout the show's run, full-body spinners have proved unreliable- Warhog, Delldog, M.R. Speed Squared and Corkscrew have all suffered as a result of their weapons not working. *If rim spinners are designed to run on wheels, impacts could bend the circular shapes into ovals which increased friction and slowed the discs. This was a problem which affected both models of Revenge of Trouble & Strife. **Likewise, rim spinners powered by bearings or tyres were susceptible to having the bearings/tyres break mid-battle, leading to reliability issues and malfunctions. The weapon mechanisms for both versions of M.R. Speed Squared demonstrated these issues on numerous occasions, with the robot's spinner often failing to work after a certain amount of impacts. *Depending on their power and design, the gyroscopic motion of rim-style full-body spinners can undermine the robot's ground clearance, or otherwise lead to stability issues when the robot moves while the weapon is rotating. The Series 9 version of M.R. Speed Squared often struggled to remain on the floor once the recoil of its hits knocked the robot off-balance; during its Head-to-Head against Concussion, it even threw itself off the arena floor while trying to spin itself and its weapon up at the same time. *Shell spinners are generally symmetrical with little indication of where the front of the robot is found once the shell has started spinning, making it difficult to control these robots. List of Full Body Spinners Robots are listed alphabetically. Robots which are not heavyweight entries are listed with a green background. Shell spinners are listed in bold. Category:Weapon Types Category:Full Body Spinners